Movie Review: Killers

Killers
(M), 93 minutes
3.5/5

I was prepared to snort my way through cheesy lines, to ponder as the credits rolled how I could have spent the last hour-and-a-half of my Monday night.
I wasn't prepared however to walk out of Killers, a strange blend of rom-com and action, and to turn to my partner and say "I really liked that".
Even less prepared was I for his response - "me too".
Killers is the story of a plain wife called Jen, played by the very unplain Katherine Heigl, who finds out her perfect husband, Spencer (Ashton Kutcher), is a hitman with 14 notches on his bodycount belt.
The first 20 minutes or so is the story of how the two met in a French resort. She has just broken up with her long-time boyfriend and he is ready to throw away a life of danger and settle down.
The film has received its fair share of bad reviews from grumpy critics.
Actually more than its fair share.
Sure there were the eye-rolling lines - on their first night out she tells him she thinks it's beautiful he wants to settle down and get to know his neighbours and he replies by telling her she is beautiful. Groan.
And anyone with even the smallest of feminist bones in their body will find the first few scenes grinding - her sole mission is to find a "cute dress" while his is to plant a bomb on a helicopter.
But half-way in, this story kicks it up a notch as Kutcher's character discovers the neighbours he yearned to know by their first names have turned into assassins who only see the $20 million on his head.
A stretching of the imagination is definitely required, if only to get past the fact she decides the best time to take a pregnancy test is after they have just killed one of their nearest and dearest.
Surviving the hitmen then becomes just one of Spencer's missions, the other is to convince his wife (who doesn't find everything so amusing once she sees the number of bars on said pregnancy test) that he deserves to be part of her family.
If you relax and see Killers for what it is though - a mindless romp of a movie - you might just find yourself having fun as you try to guess which of the couple's neighbours want them dead.